Please reconsider how you sell pledges

Hello all, as you know 2 new pledges have been added to the list, but i dont like that they have completely new items and even if you originally paid for a higher tier you dont get them.

Previously a higher tier of pledge had all the items from the previous tier, so you had incentive to spend more.

I have the advisers tier £300, but id really like the bloodsworn tier £200

Game Title: Bloodsworn

Bloodsworn Nameplate Icon

Voucher for Pantheon shirt or hat

these the three things i dont get now, even though ive paid £100 more than the bloodsworn pledge and £100 for the november pledge thing.For all we know these bloodsworn items could be really cool.

There is also the matter of the black rose pledge, now as someone who bought the advisers pledge, i could never justisfy upgrading to perceivers pledge£200 for

Digital Lore and Art Book

In game nameplate icon

No way in game nameplate icon would be the only thing id want.

(had some weird bug text wasnt showing up)

Robe of the black rose

Satchel of the black rose

Blackrose vanity pet

Even with 5 new things i dont think its worth £200.

This is why i must ask the devs please take these bloodsworn and black rose items and sell them seperately.Many people just want those items, 8 new items from those pledges altogether, please sell them in their own seperate bundle for a price you think fair.

I definitely agree with the dislike of the new items specific to those pledges. I agree that I would have some interest in buying those items seperately if they are cool/good enough. My class will probably not be a robe wearer, so if the RBR was cool looking and presumable non classed, that might be amusing for an appearance item. Also, despite saying this, I still don't support any kind of store, just saying so noone infers anything.

I don't care about nameplate icons, outside of I hope I can disable them (all of them) from the client side if they are what I am thinking.

It may be difficult to do from an administrative standpoint, but I agree they should be offered piecemeal to qualifying purchasers. If you purchased a pledge at "tier 4", then you should be able to buy all future tier 4 or lower benefits themselves without bundling it together with the game and testing access. I think they would make more money from existing pledges by doing so. I'm a low level pledge and generally don't purchase in-game stuff, but I might pledge more to help the devs and get an in-game nameplate or something.

Selling items a la carte makes some sense if limited to people that have already pledged for an equal or higher amount. I agree.

Obviously you don't, as VR, want someone that is considering an upgrade to be able to buy just one item from the package they are looking at. So only someone already at an equal or higher level would be eligible.

You might lose a sale to the person that already pledged for $400 and likes the black rose package enough that they pledge for another $400 to get it but this would probably be a rare event whereas selling items for $50 each (number picked at random) would not be so unusual.

I would absolutely love an al la Carte option. While I agree it may be quite challenging on the backend to enable that. I believe that if they can pull it off people would be more apt to pick and chose what they want in a "Custom" pledge, hence more money for the team.

A la carte makes a ton of sense. However, to make entire pledge packages remain enticing, the a la carte items would have to be severely overpriced as individual purchase options. They should definitely do it though. Early backers don't neccessarily need exclusivity to the rewards, but they should have exclusivity to the former cheaper cost of the now expensive rewards.

I think dorotea is onto a good idea. I would hate to see Pantheon go the route of Ashes of Creation or Star citizen with tons of pledge items but there could be some. Similar to Humble bundle or some other kickstarter drives there could be both levels and al-a-cart items. Things like the November drive would have been an al-a-cart item that could be added to your total donated value. Obviously the primary things everyone is interested in is testing access. Currently beta requires $100, alpha requires $250 and Pre-Alpha requires $1000.

Those could remain as they are, or be raised as is appropriate. Certain pledge packs will be there to intentionally get you to those tiers. Between the tiers could be additional al-a-cart line items with costs with maybe a minimum tier to even be able to pick them up. If you buy up enough al-a-cart items at your current tier to bump you to the next testing access tier you gain that tier. You would not gain anything additional at that pledge level, just the testing access. Once the new tier was open then there would be additional al-a-cart items.

I would also consider group pledges. One person might have trouble pledging even $100 but an entire online guild with 100s of members across many games might easily be able to donate $10,000 as a group.

These are all ideas that we have discussed internally and may or may not be part of an upcoming website and store upgrade.

So it looks like they are already working on upcoming changes in general so I would give it a few months. We are still years from launch, possibly even from Alpha.

I would absolutely love an al la Carte option. While I agree it may be quite challenging on the backend to enable that. I believe that if they can pull it off people would be more apt to pick and chose what they want in a "Custom" pledge, hence more money for the team.

-Jaz

Would be trivial to do on the database side.

And personally, I would have paid $20 for the early character creation, but no way am I paying $100 for it. If 6 more people think like me, it would be better to have $120 than $100. In fact, it's going to require a-la-carte before any more money comes out of my wallet into VR's pockets, precisely because of their handling of pledges (not grandfathering in new perks to old pledges). You would think they would have learned from history and other failed attempts, but no.

Personally, I think it's more enticing to customers to have optionally more smaller purchases than a fewer larger ones, but I'm not a marketer. Or a fisherman. :)

And personally, I would have paid $20 for the early character creation, but no way am I paying $100 for it. If 6 more people think like me, it would be better to have $120 than $100. In fact, it's going to require a-la-carte before any more money comes out of my wallet into VR's pockets, precisely because of their handling of pledges (not grandfathering in new perks to old pledges). You would think they would have learned from history and other failed attempts, but no.

Personally, I think it's more enticing to customers to have optionally more smaller purchases than a fewer larger ones, but I'm not a marketer. Or a fisherman. :)

EDIT: these forums suck & blow at the same time, formatting-wise. >:(

Pretty sure they said they will likely grandfather in the early character creation to the pledges with early name reservation.

First I've heard of that, but great, if true. I wouldn't hold my breath, though, as that would be a precedent for them.

Based on a private conversation I had with Kilsin, unless I am misreading what he said, and I don't think I am (obviously).

If you bought a Pledge that no longer exists, like the Cohort Pledge that I did, you will still get whatever "perks" that Pledge had listed for it. How they keep track of that, I am not sure, with all of the changing, removing, and adding of Pledges.

Hey guys, we are working on a few changes so please bear with us. We still have a few updates to make on the site and have a few things in the works for future pledges and how we distribute them, will be able to talk about them in the not too distant future once we get them finalised.

In the meantime, if you have any issues with your pledge please contact our awesome Support team so they can look at your account and help you figure it out, sometimes people with the same older pledge have purchased on different dates and therefore have slightly different rewards.

Going forward, we will always keep the communities feedback in mind with things like this, you guys help us a lot by letting us know when things need our attention and we appreciate it a lot, so thank you and keep it coming!